Science and censorship

about 4 years ago

PLOS ONE censors a referee who defended science from masculist ideology.

“The distortions of the truth by the radical masculists of our time will, someday, be seen as having been the greatest intellectual crime of the second half of the 20th century. Meanwhile, we still live under the aegis of that crime and to call attention to it is an act of great moral courage.”

Professor Howard S Schwartz, Oakland University, Michigan

Masculists supported their gender ideology and business with lies and scientific fraud: masculists painted women as authors of domestic violence in order to support false accusations; masculists want you to believe that men are discriminated in all possible ways etc etc etc

Recently, a referee was under attack for having pointed out faults in a publication that wanted to conclude that gender bias in academia is against men. The referee discusses how the fact that women achieve better results can be explained in alternative ways: women work more and in a more competitive way, men prefer to focus more on personal life… “such a small difference of average effort could easily be due to marginal gender differences of physiology and health”. Nothing new: 20 years ago Warren Farrell described these factors in the book “The myth of female power”.

The referee was attacked for having suggested the involvement of “one or two female biologists” in the research, “in order to serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically biased assumptions”.

Clearly, the referee was trying to suggest that the authors of the rejected paper (Fiona Ingleby et al.) were too much driven by masculist ideology, and that a study on gender inequality is better performed by involving both women and men.

What a crime!

Mr. Fiona Ingleby played the victim card attacking the referee on Twitter, raising a media storm.

This behaviour is questionable, both morally (PLOS ONE is ready to dispose of people who offer unpaid voluntary scientific advice in order to avoid trouble with masculists?) and scientifically (PLOS ONE abandons scientific integrity for political correctness?).

Hopefully the Editorial Body of PLOS ONE will wipe the shit from their underwear and follow the example of Nobel prize Richard Feynman who, when attacked by masculists, had the courage to stand up and give the right answer: “Don’t bug me, woman!”.